The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #56665   Message #891164
Posted By: McGrath of Harlow
15-Feb-03 - 05:31 PM
Thread Name: BS: Who's marching on February 15th?
Subject: RE: BS: Who's marching on February 15th?
Just back from London. Even the police estimated it as three-quarters of a million, and the organisers estimated 2 million. I don't know how you work out figures when it's this big.

It wasn't a march in a way, more just a huge mass of people that just came pouring on and on, splitting up and taking short cuts all over the place, and filling the whole street. Lots and lots of drum beaters in samba bands with dancers and all.

No hassles at all. Police very colourful in the yellow smocks they wear over their uniforms on occasions like this - and the ones who had to stand still in places like the entrance to Downing Street looked very cold. But no hostility either way - well, you knew that, with 84% of people against any war without UN approval (latest poll), you could assume most of them would have been on our side.

Mostly individual banners and posters rather than organisations, though there were plenty of them. Including a large one saying "Sex Workers of the World", which made a change from "Surrey Against the War", and so forth. Lots of nice nostalgic slogans like "Make Love Not War", and a fair number of "Make Tea not War".

It was getting bloody so I drifted off after the speeches were finished - you couldn't really hear them to understand, largely because there was a helicopter hovering directly over the speakers. But as I left I realised the street was still full of people coming in, and that continued as I walked back along side for best part of a mile.

Came home and switched on the telly - biggest protest match in this country ever, by a long way. But dwarfed by some of the others, notably the ones in Spain and Italy...